Marquand Manuel and Jeff Ulbrich share a defensive pedigree as players that stretches back to the early part of this century. And although their paths didn't intersect in opposition on the field, their professional relationship, now a decade old, took on a new dimension this week.
Manuel, now the Jets defensive backs/safeties coach, played safety for six NFL teams over eight seasons while Ulbrich, who became the team's interim head coach earlier this week, was a linebacker for 10 seasons with the San Francisco 49ers. They were thrust together in 2015 with the Atlanta Falcons -- Manuel as the secondary coach and Ulbrich as the linebackers coach.
Ulbrich, 47, made a quick and emphatic impression on Manuel, 45.
"You can go back to when we first started working together in Atlanta, when we started getting ready for the [2015] draft, the way he started preparing, the way he went through players, we were very similar in how we wanted to sit down and look at certain players," Manuel told reporters on Friday as the Jets prepared to face visiting Buffalo on Monday night. "Didn't matter where they were from, just the energy that he took on the detail of each guy. And it was that small, like it was that small.
"And the way that he came in, 'you gotta see this guy.' Like the energy and it translated into his individual periods. When you watch that, like it was always him running around, and, you know, you guys know me, that's, that's what I do. So it was just a lot of energy that we bought, from that standpoint of this guy's passionate about it and also smart. Played it. Played the game a long time, playing 'mike. We always had playing 'mike and playing safety, you have to know the entire defense. So he's been really awesome, man, just from that standpoint, in my time getting to know him. Really excited for him, like I said, it's a sad moment for all of us, but a guy that we got leading us is in charge, and we all got his back."
Manuel and Ulbrich are part of a group of coaches who joined the Jets when Robert Saleh was hired in January 2021. The group has grown close, and Manuel said that the dismissal of Saleh on Tuesday has been a challenge for the coaches and the players to deal with.
"It has been ... many people have been through this experience, one as a player and two as a coach, it's been an extremely, extremely difficult time," Manuel said. "Because we know how we all feel about him, and what he's meant to us and how we're all here because of him, so it's been really, really tough."
Though Ulbrich is now wearing a new, bigger hat than simply serving as the Jets' defensive coordinator, he said he still plans to call plays for the unit. But now his concerns extend beyond that.
"We've been together now, but I've known him a decade, and worked with him longer than anybody else," Manuel said. "But we've been with him now the last three years, so I think we all told him that we have him on this side, like we know it exactly what it takes in order for us to get ready for a game plan. We know exactly what it takes in order to get the players prepared weekly. So on that side of it, he doesn't have more on his plate from that standpoint. So, I think it's been really awesome that all of the coaches, we've all done our parts, are going trying to help him get prepared. So allow him to now do exactly what he needs to do running the team."
Manuel added that now that Ulbrich has been sprung from all the defense's rooms, all Jets players will get a blast of what Ulbrich is truly all about.
"Everyone gets to hear it now in the team meeting. That's the difference. We sit and we laugh and we joke when we were in the team meeting room, like, 'Yeah, this is what we hear every day.' That's what motivates us every day. So, it's the same. We're just hearing it now on the global scale of the team meeting room on a daily basis, which is awesome for the guys.
"You know, it's a really tough time right now that we're going through and for the guys to get that sense of camaraderie from the guy who's in charge, that means a lot."
